D.C. United trade for Impact captain Arnaud

After playing with one of the youngest teams in Major League Soccer in 2013, D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen has added some veteran savvy to next season’s squad.

D.C. United announced today that they had acquired Montreal Impact midfielder Davy Arnaud in a trade in exchange for an international roster spot for the next two seasons. The 33-year-old American arrives in D.C. following two years with the Impact where he played in 57 games and was the team’s captain.

“Davy is a versatile midfielder who has a wealth of MLS experience,” said D.C. United General Manager Dave Kasper. “He will add leadership on the field and in the locker room, and we look forward to having him as part of United.”

Next season will be the 13th MLS season of Arnaud’s career, and he’ll likely be expected to step into the shoes vacated by Dwayne De Rosario when D.C. United decided to part ways with the Canadian forward. Arnaud, who missed some time last season due to injury, scored just one goal and added five assists in 2013.

What do you think of this trade? Like the move? Think Arnaud can help lead the D.C. United midfield?

29 Responses to D.C. United trade for Impact captain Arnaud

heard this line before, doubt anything changes. sounds like an expensive, old, and now unproductive player added. and since they will only say he took a pay cut, but not give specifics, my guess is we are over paying.

Excellent, our continual dependency on transfers to bring in old, past it, injury prone veterans continue. The ONLY reasons we’re a youthful team is because of our academy and players who we get due to allocation or freebies. Our paid for transfers are the worst in the league. It’s embarrassing for a team with so much stock piled allocation money and salary budget to waste a healthy chunk of it on a 33 year old. We already have two CM/DMs who are just as good and 10 years you get and we have Silva in front of them.

What we need are strikers, wingers, and a back four. Olsen distrusts youth. He always brings in veterans who end up benched. I suppose they just characteristically echo RFK.

Arnaud is a consumate pro and a good influence on young players, the kind you want to add to a young team that had a horrible year. He is good at being the big brother to put an arm over the shoulder and to also call out a lack of effort.
If you have a team like DC, Arnvaud is worth getting for 1-2 seasons and have him start half the games or so to help stabilize the team.
If you are a playoff team looking to win it, Arnaud can be a great bench guy BUT NOT a starter.
He can fill in here and there and even on defense but as a midfielder he is too old to be a defensive bullwark and not technically gifted to do anything more than a back pass 90% of the time.

Is he a star player? No. But he is the type of player you want in a new franchise or one that has hit the bottom of the barell. It takes more than one kind of player to make this a respectavble team.
But if youre playing 500 by the end of the year, you cant be starting Arnaud all the time. Even in his prime, Arnaud was a guts kinda guy who was limited technically and offensively which is why i find some of the comments show a lack of knowledge. He never was the kind of player some people think he was.
He is a stop gap measure for crappy teams.
So you might not be thrilled DC fans but you ARE a crappy team and this is ONE of many right steps the team needs to make (i have no idea how much he costs so I dont have all the facts).

we’re heard that over and over. sorry dude, you aren’t going to convince many DC fans this is a good move. unless we find out he took a MASSIVE pay cut. otherwise he is just another expensive bench player. he was getting $275,000 last year. we know he got a pay cut, but they won’t say how much. if he was really willing to take a substantial pay cut, he would have stayed in Montreal. i guarantee DC are going to end up paying him $180,000+.

further, as stated above, we have bigger needs in other positions. that amount of cap space should have been used on others. looking at the re-entry draft, there are many other options that DC fans would rather have to help us in the positions we truly need help in.

maybe this move ends up working out, maybe. but you cannot blame DC fans for being disappointed with this move given his salary/age. this is the same thing the FO and Olsen always do and it hasn’t worked out yet. why should we think this will be any different?

I think he’s a good player, at least he has been.
Another plus for him is that he wasn’t here for last year. He’s coming in fresh. DC United needs plenty of fresh faces, even if they are no better than the faces that left in some cases.
I wish I had loftier goals for the team, but I’m realistic. We’ll be bad until this stadium gets built.
I am concerned about how much we might be paying Arnaud. We’ve overspent a ton on older journeyman players recently. At least we only gave up an international spot… since we suck so much at using them, it isn’t worth much. At least we still have our draft picks.

An irrelevant trophy and an unearned spot in CL. The league should simply have runners up to the Cup and winners of the conferences go, but this league is attached to the idea of the Open Cup mattering to anyone in the next 100 years.

Every coach relies on at least one veteran player to help guide the team on the field and in the locker room. The only players capable of that last year were Neal, Thorrington, and DeRosario, and two of those three are gone. Arnaud will essentially step in as the de facto captain right off the back and onto a team that is in desperate need of veteran leadership (only 1 player over the age of 30, only 4 players older than 26). Will he start every game? Probably not, but he’s versatile enough to fill in where needed, and DC’s track record with injuries all but ensures that he’ll be given plenty of time to contribute.